IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eti/dpaper/24028.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Rise and Fall of Cities under Declining Population and Diminishing Distance Frictions: The case of Japan

Author

Listed:
  • MORI Tomoya
  • MURAKAMI Daisuke

Abstract

Many countries are expected to face rapidly declining and aging populations. Meanwhile, urbanization continues worldwide, preserving the power law for city size distribution at the country level. We have developed a spatial statistical model based on the theory of economic agglomeration to predict the future geographic distribution of the population at the 1 km grid level. The model considers growth factors for cities and grids, while maintaining the power law for city size distribution at the country level. Japan is an ideal case study of a shrinking economy. It highlights the challenges that the rest of Asia and the world are likely to face. Cities in aging regions will decline more rapidly, shifting the center of gravity of the country's population distribution. Smaller cities are more vulnerable to population decline, but with declining transportation and communication costs, even large cities are not immune to elimination. The future urban economy will revolve around fewer and more distant larger cities.

Suggested Citation

  • MORI Tomoya & MURAKAMI Daisuke, 2024. "The Rise and Fall of Cities under Declining Population and Diminishing Distance Frictions: The case of Japan," Discussion papers 24028, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    • Handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:24028
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rieti.go.jp/jp/publications/dp/24e028.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sudipto Banerjee & Alan E. Gelfand & Andrew O. Finley & Huiyan Sang, 2008. "Gaussian predictive process models for large spatial data sets," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 70(4), pages 825-848, September.
    2. Tomoya Mori & Takashi Akamatsu & Yuki Takayama & Minoru Osawa, 2022. "Origin of power laws and their spatial fractal structure for city-size distributions," Papers 2207.05346, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2023.
    3. Tabuchi, Takatoshi & Thisse, Jacques-François, 2011. "A new economic geography model of central places," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 240-252, March.
    4. Durbin, James & Koopman, Siem Jan, 2012. "Time Series Analysis by State Space Methods," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 2, number 9780199641178, Decembrie.
    5. Wen‐Tai Hsu, 2012. "Central Place Theory and City Size Distribution," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(563), pages 903-932, September.
    6. Fujita, Masahisa & Krugman, Paul & Mori, Tomoya, 1999. "On the evolution of hierarchical urban systems1," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 209-251, February.
    7. Tomoya Mori & Koji Nishikimi & Tony E. Smith, 2008. "The Number‐Average Size Rule: A New Empirical Relationship Between Industrial Location And City Size," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 165-211, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hsu, Wen-Tai & Holmes, Thomas J. & Morgan, Frank, 2014. "Optimal city hierarchy: A dynamic programming approach to central place theory," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 245-273.
    2. Marcus Berliant & Tomoya Mori, 2017. "Beyond urban form: How Masahisa Fujita shapes us," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 13(1), pages 5-28, March.
    3. Kim, Ho Yeon, 2012. "Shrinking population and the urban hierarchy," IDE Discussion Papers 360, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    4. Gordon Mulligan & Mark Partridge & John Carruthers, 2012. "Central place theory and its reemergence in regional science," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 48(2), pages 405-431, April.
    5. Mori, Tomoya & Smith, Tony E., 2015. "On the spatial scale of industrial agglomerations," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 1-20.
    6. Dobis, Elizabeth A. & Delgado, Michael S. & Florax, Raymond J.G.M & Mulder, Peter, 2015. "The Significance of Urban Hierarchy in Explaining Population Dynamics in the United States," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205869, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    7. de Palma, André & Papageorgiou, Yorgos Y. & Thisse, Jacques-François & Ushchev, Philip, 2019. "About the origin of cities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 1-13.
    8. Takashi Akamatsu & Tomoya Mori & Minoru Osawa & Yuki Takayama, 2017. "Spatial Scale of Agglomeration and Dispersion: Theoretical Foundations and Empirical Implications," KIER Working Papers 974, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    9. Tomoya Mori, 2017. "Central Place Analysis," KIER Working Papers 959, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    10. MORI Tomoya, 2021. "Regularity in Urban Agglomeration Patterns and Its Macroscopic Implications for Regional Policies (Japanese)," Policy Discussion Papers (Japanese) 21012, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    11. MORI Tomoya, 2017. "Evolution of Sizes and Industrial Structure of Cities in Japan from 1980 to 2010: Constant churning and persistent regularity," Discussion papers 17013, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    12. Yanting Tang & Jinlong Gao & Wen Chen, 2022. "The Spatial-Temporal Evolution of Population in the Yangtze River Delta, China: An Urban Hierarchy Perspective," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-15, October.
    13. Dieter Pennerstorfer & Nora Schindler & Christoph Weiss & Biliana Yontcheva, 2020. "Income Inequality and Product Variety: Empirical Evidence," Economics working papers 2020-17, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    14. Takashi Akamatsu & Tomoya Mori & Yuki Takayama, 2015. "Agglomerations in a multi-region economy: Poly-centric versus mono-centric patterns," KIER Working Papers 929, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    15. Maxim Goryunov & Sergey Kokovin, 2016. "‘Vanishing cities’: Can urban costs explain deindustrialization?," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95(3), pages 633-651, August.
    16. Baum-Snow, Nathaniel & Henderson, J. Vernon & Turner, Matthew A. & Zhang, Qinghua & Brandt, Loren, 2020. "Does investment in national highways help or hurt hinterland city growth?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    17. Jorge Díaz-Lanchas & José Luis Zofío & Carlos Llano, 2022. "A trade hierarchy of cities based on transport cost thresholds," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(8), pages 1359-1376, August.
    18. Hiroki Aizawa & Kiyohiro Ikeda & Yosuke Kogure, 2023. "Satellite City Formation for a Spatial Economic Model," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 529-558, September.
    19. Jens Wrona, 2018. "Border Effects Without Borders: What Divides Japan's Internal Trade?," CESifo Working Paper Series 7056, CESifo.
    20. Wieland, Thomas, 2014. "Räumliches Einkaufsverhalten und Standortpolitik im Einzelhandel unter Berücksichtigung von Agglomerationseffekten: Theoretische Erklärungsansätze, modellanalytische Zugänge und eine empirisch-ökonome," MPRA Paper 77163, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eti:dpaper:24028. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: TANIMOTO, Toko (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rietijp.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.